Velociraptor caenaculi
by Kryptaria
Summary: or What Lives in the Attic above John Watson's Bedroom? Scratch marks on the stairs. Dead rats in the freezer. An order of pizza that John doesn't share. And then things get really strange. Part 1 of Intellect and Instincts.


It started with the odd scratch marks on the stairs, the day of the fourth bank robbery. Sherlock's footsteps stuttered to a halt as he spotted the marks — gouges, really — and fixed them in his mind. Not furniture; more like claws of some sort, but what?

John bumped into him, flatting a hand between his shoulderblades. "Sherlock! Go!" he ordered, and Sherlock took off again, pushing the strange marks out of his mind. For now.

.

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But the bank robbery case took an interminable week and a half to solve, because London ATC refused to give Sherlock the records of authorized flights in city airspace, and no one else would listen to him when it was _obvious_ that the robbers were working with one of the news helicopter crews.

And by the time that mystery was over, Sherlock had a new at-home mystery to solve: namely, why the freezer was full of dead rats.

Correction: Why was the freezer full of dead rats that _he hadn't put there?_ Because the freezer had housed dead rats twice since he'd moved into 221B Baker Street. He would've remembered this, though, because there were... well, quite a lot of them.

A noise at the kitchen door made him turn to see John enter, a look of shock on his face. He was only wearing his dressing gown, which he never did — he _always_ wore pyjama bottoms, even when he'd just finished showering, and usually wore a T-shirt at the very least. But there was a clear V of bare skin above the loose-tied belt, and just under a half inch of skin showed above his knees. He wasn't even wearing socks.

And he was carrying a disposable styrofoam cooler.

"Sherlock," he said blankly, trying and failing to school his face into the vaguely pleasant nothing-to-suspect-here expression that Sherlock was accustomed to seeing on suspects.

"John," Sherlock answered, absolutely _fascinated_ by this new twist. His flatmate was acting oddly and there was a freezer full of dead rats. He felt a tingling sense of anticipation as he realized that the post-case boredom might not hit at all.

John entered the kitchen, perhaps deciding that retreating would be even more suspicious. "Thought you were looking over those fingerprint books tonight for that cold case," he said cheerily, though his eyes darted to the freezer more than once.

"Lestrade cancelled. Reconciliation date with his wife." Deliberately, Sherlock looked at the cooler, raising a brow in silent question.

John froze, head cocking slightly to one side as, for one instant, he _changed_. Sherlock took an involuntary step back, skin prickling with a sense of alarm. His heart thumped heavily against his ribs as adrenaline slammed into his veins.

Then John blinked and it was simply gone, replaced by his usual vague, affable smile. "Oh. Well, uh... so much for the surprise," he said, offering Sherlock the cooler.

Sherlock hesitated, still caught in the icy grip of what he recognized as a physiological response to fear. _Don't be ridiculous,_ he told himself very firmly. This was _John_. There was no reason at all to be afraid of him.

"You got me rats," Sherlock said, taking the cooler. His voice was tense, pitched just a bit higher than normal.

"Quite a few. Should be more than enough for whatever experiments you come up with, as long as you don't go wasting them."

Sherlock blinked, _positive_ he was missing something, though he couldn't imagine what. "Thank you," he said automatically, because John liked courtesy like that.

John smiled warmly in response. "Well, I'll just turn in, get an early night. Don't leave any of those out to stink up the flat. And no maggots unless you keep them in a box with a lid, understand?"

"I remember," Sherlock said, not quite able to keep from sounding sulky. He hadn't expected having a flatmate would come with so many _rules_.

"Good night then, Sherlock," John said with one last smile before he headed upstairs.

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Sherlock lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, his mind whirling between delight that John had given him such a thoughtful gift and the even more interesting puzzle of his odd behavior. There were a dozen experiments he could think of without even trying — the sheer quantity of rats made it possible for him to have a real control group and to branch out with variants that normally wouldn't —

He heard a distant sound — a creak.

_The stairs,_ he thought, suddenly remembering the odd scratch marks.

He rolled out of bed, tugged on his dressing gown, and slipped out. He knew where the loud floorboards were and took a somewhat roundabout path to the front window, where he peered down into the streets to see...

A pizza-delivery bicycle?

Sniffing, he caught the faint scent of garlic and red sauce.

He heard fast, heavy footfalls on the staircase, this time going up. To John's room.

John had ordered pizza. But John _hated_ the local pizza places — rightly so.

Gouges on the stairs. Dead rats in the freezer. John ordering pizza.

Unable to stand the mystery anymore, Sherlock went after him, reaching the stairs just as John's bedroom door closed.

And locked.

Well that was just rude!

Sherlock stared up at the closed door, folding his arms over his chest. The staircase was chilly and smelled of pizza, and now he was _hungry_.

With a huff, he turned and went to the kitchen to find something to eat, turning his mind to the worst, most grotesque experiments he could think of — something John would _hate_.

Teach him not to share.

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From that point on, Sherlock began to notice a pattern in John's behavior, one that should have been apparent earlier only because so many serial killers operated on a lunar cycle. It was absolute nonsense to think that the moon's phase had any _physiological _effect on human behavior, of course — pop culture and superstition and other such rubbish — but the psychological effect was undeniable. Multiple studies proved that violent crimes increased on and around the full moon.

And so did John's odd behavior.

"Think I'll turn in early," John said when it was barely half nine, two nights before the full moon.

The next night, he pointedly yawned his way through an early dinner and excused himself when it was just past seven. As if Sherlock would _ever_ believe he went to bed that early?

Sherlock entered the data into the spreadsheet he'd been constructing — one that was pointing to a conclusion that Sherlock was not prepared to accept. Most of the cells were blank holes where he'd deleted data he'd once known, thinking (wrongly) that John's bedtime was insignificant. But he'd been able to fill in more than enough to recognize the pattern. For one or two days surrounding every full moon, John would disappear early in the evening. Several times, his excuse was a night shift at the clinic. Other times, he was out with mates at the pub or on a date. Once, he even scraped the bottom of the barrel to claim he was staying with Harry for the weekend — and Sherlock had _believed_ him!

Three hours passed — surely long enough for John to be 'asleep' or finished wanking or whatever else he was doing up in the privacy of his room. Sherlock left the telly on (John had actually left it on; Sherlock had just ignored it) and took the lockpicks out of the pocket of his robe. He crept upstairs silently and pressed low to the floor, trying to see through the gap under the door.

John's room was dark. Excellent. He was probably asleep.

Sherlock rose and unscrewed the hallway light bulb with quick twitches of his fingers. He burned his fingertips but ignored the sting. Fortunately, he didn't need light to pick locks, and soon the door clicked gently open.

Sherlock listened for two full minutes, frowning just a bit as he realized he couldn't hear John's breathing. A thread of worry twisted through the curiosity filling his mind — had something happened to John?

He slipped in, walking silently on bare feet, and tried to distinguish the shape of the bed, but the darkness was too complete.

His next step made him gasp and grunt in pain as his foot slammed into some obstacle. He put out a hand and felt the attic ladder had been dropped from the trapdoor.

_Why?_ he wondered, feeling the ladder to see if it had been locked into place or if it had just... No, that was ridiculous. It wouldn't just _fall_. It was counter-weighted.

Baffled, he felt around to get his foot on the bottom rung. He climbed as quietly as he could, though the damned thing creaked with every step.

Slowly, he made his way up into the attic, a cold, unfinished open space that reminded him of the garret where he'd lived on Montague Street. He avoided coming up here except to store old newspapers. Is that what John had been doing? Going through Sherlock's things in secret? But _why?_ Sherlock didn't care — he had no particular desire to keep secrets from John unless it was for an experiment.

He hadn't brought a torch, but there were two old, dust-covered windows that faced the street. It was just enough light to see his stacks of boxes were undisturbed.

Then he heard a _sound_ behind him, and his skin crawled as the noise — the _breath_ — sparked some primal, visceral reaction in him, one that had nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with survival. He turned, inhaling a quick gasp as he caught a flash of light on something round and _close_ before it disappeared, and he realized it was an _eye_.

_Tapetum lucidum,_ he thought inanely. It was the mirror-layer deep in the eyes of some predators, such as cats, enabling them to see in the dark. Enabling them to see _their prey_.

Sherlock twisted, trying to rush back down the ladder, but _something_ caught his dressing gown — something sharp and tearing that shredded the silk before catching on the stitched collar. He looked up and back over his shoulder and warm breath, stinking of meat, washed over him.

The fangs, he noticed, were a good two inches long.

_It_ huffed at him and — and _tugged_ at his robe, making a low sort of growling sound.

It _didn't_ bite.

Sherlock knew that there were _things_ that people said in this sort of situation. Well, not _this_ situation, but to dogs and the like. He had no idea what, because they were invariably stupid. Dogs didn't understand English.

Dogs also didn't have two-inch fangs or the ability to _grasp_.

"Opposable digits," he said. The words sounded rusty and harsh and very, very loud over the sound of _its_ breathing.

It snorted, this time through its nostrils.

It let go.

Sherlock stepped down hard, just far enough that his shoulders dipped below the level of the attic floor, and _its_ head followed, visible by the reflective mirror-sheen of its eyes.

He had to see. He _had to know_.

He threw himself off the ladder before it could grab him again. His knee slammed painfully into John's nightstand, but he didn't care. He clawed at the wall, found the switch, and flooded the room with light.

Motion above, a startled _growl,_ all too fast for Sherlock to see. But it wasn't following him, and that gave him courage.

"Come here," he said, trying for a commanding voice. He failed miserably.

But he heard motion overhead, and a moment later, he saw a hint of russet brown and gold. The curve of a muzzle, narrow and predatory, lightly blurred by what appeared to be a fine coat of downy feathers. But it had _teeth,_ not a beak, and Sherlock stopped breathing as the head descended further.

It wasn't _possible._

The skull was sleek, eyes set forward for binocular vision — depth perception, movement tracking, useful for separating prey from a herd. No ears, teeth meant for tearing, sinuous neck...

Sherlock's seven-year-old self, long since locked away in his memory, piped up with glee: _Dinosaur!_

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.

.

It was perhaps four meters long from nose to tailtip, its body coated in soft feathers, lighter on the underside. A crest of lighter feathers, a creamy gold color, started between its eyes and stretched down its neck, ending at its shoulders. Longer feathers covered its forelimbs, which were much more proportionate than those of the Tyrannosaurs. Sherlock's memory of dinosaurs was imperfect, deleted in many spots as irrelevant, and he regretted the loss of that knowledge.

It was finally the feet that gave it away, with its sickle-shaped second claw. It was a velociraptor, though not any subspecies he could recall, because this particular velociraptor — _the velociraptor in the attic_ — looked significantly heavier than the three stone or so that they were supposed to weigh, not to mention being twice as long.

_Velociraptor caenaculi,_ he thought a little madly, wondering if he'd get to name the new species by virtue of discovering it.

Of course, it was far more likely that he'd made some mistake with a chemical experiment and exposed himself to a powerful hallucinogen. Or that he'd simply and quietly gone insane. But if either of those were true, John would eventually find him and fix it all, so he decided instead to enjoy having a... well, a dinosaur in the attic.

"I'm going to fetch a lamp," he told it, before the absurdity of speaking English to a dinosaur made him fall silent.

He went down to the living room, unplugged a lamp, and brought it up to John's room. Then, because he still wasn't thinking clearly, he had to go back downstairs to find an extension cord, all the while hoping the velociraptor didn't leave.

Not that he knew where it would go.

Or where John was.

He _wasn't_ up in the attic, though. Sherlock had thoroughly searched the attic for... well, for _parts,_ though even thinking it had made his stomach churn. And there was no way a velociraptor of that size could have silently killed and eaten a man like John Watson. So John must have gone out, perhaps to... to get his pet food.

_Pet velociraptor,_ Sherlock thought, as he plugged in the extension cord and tossed it up the trapdoor into the attic. He really was going mad. God, he hoped John found him before Mycroft did. John wouldn't have him locked away in an asylum. He _liked_ Sherlock's insanity, at least to date.

It took some maneuvering to get the floor lamp up into the attic, but it was worth the effort when he turned it on and was able to see the _Velociraptor caenaculi_ in its full glory. It was a beautiful specimen, much more formidable than the reconstruction at the British museum (which Sherlock had seen only because someone had tried to steal it).

It was much more intelligent, too, given that dinosaurs were supposedly cursed with tiny little brains almost on the level of Anderson's. It seemed to understand that Sherlock wanted to look, and it obligingly stayed still for him, balanced in a low crouch forced by the attic's peaked roof.

The light showed other things as well, including a nest of bedding — John's old army blankets, in fact, in tan and olive green, folded into a pile that was only slightly disrupted. There was a styrofoam container nearby, and Sherlock suddenly remembered —

"The rats!" he exclaimed, crouching and going for the container. As he expected, it contained a few pieces of partially thawed meat — cow, he suspected — down at the bottom, though the bloody traces on the sides showed it had been full. "So he's been feeding you."

The velociraptor huffed suddenly, blowing stinking breath right over Sherlock's hair. It had followed him.

He turned and couldn't help but flinch — _anyone_ would flinch with those teeth so close to his eye. Then he looked more closely, realizing the back teeth were serrated. One was chipped, and he raised a finger to poke at it.

It flinched back in surprise, but then lowered its head again with an exhale that sounded suspiciously like a deep sigh.

Cautiously, Sherlock moved the velociraptor's lip up and ran his finger over the tooth. It snarled and huffed again but submitted to the examination. And then he couldn't resist continuing, noting details with a growing sense of delight. He took the right forelimb and examined the digits, noting how the wrist structure forced it to hold its palms facing inward rather than down in a naturally relaxed position. The claws were very well groomed, not chipped or ragged.

Sherlock smirked. John teased him about having his nails manicured? He could just picture John up here in the attic with his pet, filing its claws smooth.

"So where _is_ John?" he asked absently, cupping the elbow (or something that seemed like an elbow, at any rate) as he extended and flexed the forelimb. "I didn't hear him go out, but clearly he's found a way to sneak out of the flat."

Of course the velociraptor didn't answer, though it did huff a few times.

Curious, Sherlock put his hands on the velociraptor's torso, feeling the structure of the ribs. The shape was somewhat between the flattened oval of a human's ribs and the narrow, deep chest of a bird.

His thoughts ground to a halt as he felt scar tissue just below the left clavicle. The velociraptor's head jerked back, gleaming eyes focused on him, and it huffed again. Sherlock parted the feathers, careful not to break the quills, and felt the scarring with a growing sense of worry. It was a puncture wound — an _exit_ wound, specifically — and he wondered if it had fallen victim to a hunting accident of some sort. Perhaps John had rescued it while in Afghanistan —

"Oh," he whispered.

He'd once told John that when all other possibilities were eliminated, whatever remained, however improbable, was truth.

John was missing. There was a velociraptor in the attic.

John had been shot, and the exit wound was high on the left side of his chest, just below the clavicle. The velociraptor's chest was scarred high on the left side.

John's number thirty molar was chipped along the front outer edge. One of the velociraptor's serrated fangs, towards the back, was chipped smooth along the front edge, though it remained serrated at the back.

In a very soft voice, full of uncharacteristic doubt, he asked, "John?"

It let out a sigh and sank down into a crouch, counterbalanced by its long tail. Slowly, it nodded.

.

.

.

The velociraptor — _John_ — allowed Sherlock to examine him in detail, though as soon as Sherlock got near his hindquarters, he deliberately sat and wouldn't stand again. "You're a _dinosaur,_" Sherlock had complained. "It's ridiculous to be _shy_. And you're not wearing pants, in any case!" But John was soldier-stubborn even as a velociraptor, it seemed, and Sherlock finally gave in, moving down to count the vertebrae in his tail.

But after what felt like hours, John moved again, curling up in a fetal position on the blankets, using his teeth to drag one of the blankets over himself.

"That's it?" Sherlock protested, crawling after him and cursing the low ceiling. "I'm hardly finished. I need more data. I can work out something to let you write —"

John lifted his head and deliberately blew a noxious puff of air at Sherlock, making him recoil back.

"Mouthwash," Sherlock muttered, waving a hand in the air to clear the stink.

John sighed and flopped his head down on the blankets. Sherlock stared at him, captivated by the absurd image of a sulking dinosaur.

But then John _shuddered,_ his whole body racking violently, and Sherlock grabbed at him, remembering the fragility of his feathers at the last moment. "John? John, what's wrong?" he asked sharply as the shuddering intensified.

John _snarled_ at him, snapping his teeth before a convulsion contorted his head back, almost all the way to his tail. As his limbs flailed, Sherlock threw himself forward to hold John down, thinking wildly of what could possibly be reasonable emergency medical treatment for a velociraptor having what looked like a grand mal seizure.

Heat blossomed across his thigh, but he didn't even register the wound until he felt liquid slip down over his skin, and the agony hit all at once as his leg buckled, no longer interested in supporting his weight.

John _growled,_ thrashing violently, forcing Sherlock to scramble back out of range of the deadly sickle-claws. He clutched at his bleeding thigh and stared, hating his helplessness, as John's convulsions slowed. One hand clawed at the floor with blunt fingernails —

"John!" Sherlock shouted, because it was _a human hand,_ skin and calluses and lingering suntan, and not a feathered, clawed forelimb. The gasping breaths were no longer attenuated through a long throat and narrow chest.

"Fuck," John croaked, kicking free of the blankets, short and muscular and _human_, blinking dark blue eyes and scrubbing at his face with his palms as though having difficulty focusing.

"John. You're —" Sherlock cut off, because there was _no logical word,_ and besides, his leg hurt far too much, and he knew this amount of blood was extremely bad.

"Damn. Did I — Sherlock," John stammered, all in a rush, as he grabbed one of the blankets. He folded it up into a wad and pressed it over the wound, sending starbursts of pain to explode in Sherlock's leg and head. "Hold this. Lots of pressure. I'll get my kit," he ordered, scrambling away, swearing when he banged his head on the low ceiling.

Sherlock turned to watch, because he needed to think of _anything_ besides the pain in his leg, and he realized he'd never before seen John without his trousers on. _So that's why he used to limp,_ he thought, seeing two lines of puncture wounds high up on his right thigh, just below his hip. The damage had been ragged — it should have been far more extensive, deforming the flesh and completely disabling him, but somehow, he'd survived. Somehow he could actually walk.

And because he was Sherlock Holmes, even while bleeding out from a wound that might well be fatal, he crafted the shape of that wound and matched it up to the muzzle-shape of a velociraptor — to _John_.

_He bit himself?_ he thought in a distant sort of way, wondering when he'd fallen on his side. The warmth was spreading down over his leg, pooling up below him in a way that was certainly bad.

Perhaps _this_ was reality. He'd taken some fatal wound and had hallucinated the past ten hours. Physical trauma could distort a person's ability to judge the passage of time. That made far more sense than the idea of John turning into a velociraptor that lived in the attic.

Besides, John was back now, carrying the medkit that he kept stashed in his closet like the good army doctor he would always be. He was talking to Sherlock, his voice low and steady — his _doctor-voice,_ Sherlock identified. That was kind of him, lying to Sherlock, saying he'd be all right, because Sherlock knew there was nothing _all right_ about this. His chest hurt and he was dizzy, but at least he wasn't dying alone. That was nice.

John's efforts were hurting him, tugging on the wound and stabbing needles and all, but Sherlock didn't mind. He looked up at the light on John's hair, realizing it was the same color as the velociraptor's coat of downy feathers, with that magnificent crest of pale gold. For a hallucination, it had been _perfectly_ detailed, but Sherlock expected no less. His mind had crafted it.

And apparently, his mind wanted it back, because John was grunting as if in pain, but the feathers were there instead of skin, and when he unfolded from his crouch, he extended his narrow, fanged head.

The velociraptor was back.

"No. John," Sherlock protested weakly, though he didn't regret the chance to feel those feathers one last time. He wanted John with him as he died, but even this form was... acceptable.

John batted his head into Sherlock's hand, but it wasn't aggressive. It was more like how a cat would do, and Sherlock kept his fingers buried in soft feathers as John lowered his head.

The first touch of a raspy tongue over the wound made Sherlock jump in surprise. Well, more like twitch, and weakly at that, because he barely had the strength to breathe. Apparently, John was planning on... on what? On killing and eating him to hide the corpse?

Smart, clever John. He wouldn't be arrested for murder with no body, so long as he could figure out how to clean the blood from the floor. He'd have to burn the building, which would inconvenience Mrs. Hudson —

Agony ripped through Sherlock, scattering his thoughts. He couldn't help but scream as John's long, serrated fangs sank into his flesh, puncturing deep into the muscles of his thigh. "Wait!" Sherlock gasped, batting weakly at John's head. "Not — not dead —" he tried to protest, but everything was going dark and his heart wasn't beating anymore and it hurt too much to breathe.

.

.

.

"Sherlock. _Sherlock._"

John's voice.

"If you don't get up, I'm pushing you out the trapdoor."

Harsh words. Tone full of worry. Desperation.

"Sherlock, please. _Wake up._"

Hands, gentle, human, lifting by the shoulders. Warmth pressed to his back.

Apparently, Sherlock had not actually been eaten by a dinosaur. By his _flatmate,_ the dinosaur.

He choked out a sort of laugh. He must have created a truly _fantastic_ hallucinogen to have given him such a vivid experience. He normally didn't like hallucinogens, but this one...

"I'm _brilliant,_" he told John, twisting to look at him, sort of upside-down.

It was a bit odd that they were in the attic, but perhaps he'd made his way there as part of the hallucination. Setting the stage.

"God, Sherlock," John whispered, scooting closer to Sherlock's back to support him. He wrapped his arms around Sherlock's chest and muttered into his hair, "You bloody _idiot_. I could have killed you."

"If you do, eat the corpse. You shouldn't be caught," Sherlock said.

John went tense.

"I... should explain," Sherlock began. Even _he_ realized how odd that sounded.

"Christ. No, Sherlock. You almost _died_." John hugged him more tightly for another few seconds.

"It was _fantastic_. You have no _idea_ what I experienced."

"You mean the part where you found a dinosaur in the attic or the part where said dinosaur nicked your femoral artery?" John asked wryly.

"Both! It —"

Sherlock stopped.

He sat up, a bit surprised to find he _could_ sit up.

"Have I told you this already?"

John sighed and moved out from behind Sherlock. He was covered in blood, with a blood-saturated tan blanket wrapped loosely around his waist, covering his lower half.

"That's... very realistic," Sherlock said numbly, looking down at himself. His pyjama bottoms were similarly soaked in sticky blood clinging to his skin, though the right leg was nearly gone, shredded from hip to knee, revealing vicious scars — puncture wounds.

_Healed_ puncture wounds.

"Have... I been here for six weeks?" he asked faintly, prodding at the scars. "Or eight weeks? This doesn't hurt _at all_."

John slapped Sherlock's hand away. "Stop that. And no. It's been about four hours."

_Four hours,_ Sherlock thought, looking at the nicely healed scars. He bent his right leg tentatively, braced against what should have been enough pain for even him to black out. With this level of deep scarring, the muscle should have been shredded, perhaps partially detached, surely too damaged to support his weight.

There was almost no pain. Minimal weakness. He could lift his foot, extended, with only minor trembling as the muscle struggled against the weight of his own limb.

"John..."

"I'm sorry — I'm _really_ sorry — but you would have died," John apologized. He put his hand on Sherlock's knee and gently pressed his leg back down. "Don't overdo it."

"I'm..."

_Not dead,_ Sherlock thought, staring at John.

"And you're..."

_A dinosaur,_ he finished silently.

"God. I wish you'd... I should've known better. I should've made you go back down before I changed. It's the only thing we can't control. But... I thought you might like to see —"

"_John!"_ Sherlock interrupted sharply.

John cut himself off, giving Sherlock a miserable, guilty look.

"What can't _'we'_ control?"

John licked his lips and looked away evasively. "The... change. The shapechange. I mean, we can — I can start it and end it almost any time, except during the full moon, but _during_ the —"

"Full moon — _You are not a werewolf!_" Sherlock snapped.

John snorted. "Did I _look_ like a wolf?"

Sherlock stared at him. "So you're... you're _what?_ A... _were-dinosaur?_ That's ridiculous!"

"Yeah, well, we're _both_ ridiculous, then."

Sherlock looked down at the puncture wounds — the _healed_ puncture wounds on his right thigh.

Then he twisted and grabbed at John's blanket, snatching it away before John could stop him. The wounds on his leg were higher up, edging against his hip, but they were otherwise identical.

_Bite transmission,_ he thought. _Some agent in the saliva, like rabies. Viral? Affects DNA? Has John studied this?_

"Sherlock. Sherlock, I know what you're doing," John said, taking hold of Sherlock's chin to lift his face, forcing Sherlock to meet his eyes. "You need to stop. You need to eat and you need rest."

"Have you done blood analysis? Tissue samples —"

"Three days. I promise, in three days, you can do whatever tests you like," John said in that serious tone that meant he wasn't just indulging Sherlock but was making a genuine promise.

"But —"

"No, Sherlock. We're going downstairs and you're going to eat, and then I'm going to lay in a decent supply of food for tonight while you _go to sleep_."

"But I'm —"

"A dinosaur, yes. A shape-changing dinosaur. And you're going to do _exactly_ as I say, until you get this under control."

"But —"

"Do you want to eat Mrs. Hudson?"

Sherlock blinked.

"Didn't think so. Now come on, let's get you out of these clothes before she wakes up and finds you like this."

"She's not —"

"No." John gave Sherlock a push towards the trapdoor. "Move, Sherlock. You look like you've been in a fight with a zombie and lost."

The absurdity of that statement made Sherlock choke on a laugh. "John!" he protested, stepping onto the ladder.

He grinned. "Got you moving, didn't it?"

"I'm _really_ a dinosaur?"

"Yes. I'm sorry —"

"Oh, god, don't be. Can I eat Anderson?"

"No."

"Chase him? Maul him?"

"No."

"Donovan?"

"Sherlock."

"_Mycroft?"_

John fell silent, climbing down after Sherlock. He hadn't bothered with a blanket, and now that Sherlock could _see_ him, he realized that the bullet wound in his shoulder wouldn't have been enough to invalid him out of the military. He'd probably arranged his medical discharge once he'd been... _infected_.

"So, I _can_ eat Mycroft?"

"No. But... we'll discuss scaring him, if he gives us a good enough reason," John said, grinning. "You just can't go without me."

"Why not?"

"Don't you know anything about dinosaurs? Velociraptors hunt in packs, and I'm your pack leader."

"You? You are _not_."

"As if you _ever_ could be?"

"I'm smarter."

"I'm stronger."

"Are we going to argue about this?"

"No. We'll just go back into the attic, change, and I'll prove it. It'll be a week before you're even able to walk without tripping over your own tail."

"Two days."

John reached for his dressing gown, then looked at his blood-covered hand. "A week. Can you hear Mrs. Hudson? Is she awake?"

"No. You're _certain_ this is real?" Sherlock asked, holding his hand out to keep John from opening the bedroom door.

John looked at him sympathetically and nodded. "Yes. I'm afraid it is."

Sherlock grinned. A dinosaur. A _were-dinosaur!_ "You know, John... This might just be _better_ than being a pirate."


End file.
